The average initial freezing temperatureswere−1.24 and−1.05 °C for lowand high pH beef respectively. It is not easy to extend the results from this study, which were obtained using a −80 °C freezer, to what happens in chilled meat storage where the product is held vacuum packed in an environment of approximately −1.5 °C for many weeks. However, with the range of initial freezing temperatures measured in this study, one might expect the incidence of ice crystal formation in vacuum packed chilled meat held at −1.5 °C to be higher than being currently reported. However, the result suggests that for ice crystals to form in the product, the storage temperature needs to be lower than the initial freezing temperature (probably by 0.5–1.0 °C) in order to overcomethe supercooling phase and to cause nucleation of ice crystals. The implication of this is that any attempt to lower the storage temperature of meat to below the current −1.5 °C – as is currently being discussed by the meat industry – could result in an increased number of cases of chilled meat product freezing. Slow freezing, such as can be expected in a chilling process, also results in the formation of larger ice crystals which can result in greater disruption to the cell structure of the meat and the degradation of the meat quality (Ngapo, Babare, Reynolds, & Mawson, 1999a,b).